Expert: Not fair to Roof, jury to withhold evidence about his ‘broken brain’

During Dylann Roof defense attorney David Bruck’s closing argument at Roof’s hate crimes trial last month, Bruck did everything but call his client crazy.

In a 42-minute statement, Bruck spent most of his time urging jurors to ponder Roof’s psychological turmoil that drove him to kill seven parishioners. Bruck used words such as “abnormal,” “delusional,” “obsession,” “lost” and “mad.”

The attorney’s remarks were amplified last week by a nationally known forensic psychiatrist who has evaluated numerous killers and terrorists. Xavier Amador told The State newspaper that Roof has all the hallmarks of what Amador called “a broken brain.”

Roof, Bruck said in court, was in the grip of an irrational belief that “there is raging in our society a fight to the death between black people and white people that is being ... covered up by some sort of vast conspiracy.” Roof is the only one who understands, Bruck told jurors.

As he spoke, Judge Richard Gergel repeatedly cut off the lawyer’s efforts to detail Roof’s mental state because mental health issues usually are reserved for the sentencing phase of death penalty cases.

That final, penalty phase is set to begin Tuesday.

So far, Roof has insisted that no mental health evidence will be presented to the jury that will decide whether he will live or die.

On Dec. 15, the same jurors found Roof, 22, a white supremacist from Columbia, guilty of hate crimes involving the execution-style killings of nine African-Americans during a Bible study in 2015 at a historic Charleston church.

Roof has said he will act as his own attorney and present no witnesses in the penalty phase. His nationally known death penalty attorney will be “standby” counsel, sitting next to Roof but doing little else.

As recently as last week, Bruck said his client “may lack the mental capacity to assume the role of his own lawyer.”

Federal prosecutors Jay Richardson, Nathan Williams and Stephen Curran have made it clear they will show the jury how Roof methodically planned to carry out his killings.

Prosecutors also will offer evidence about the impact of the killings on friends and families of those killed, as well as introduce what court filings describe as Roof’s “jailhouse manifesto” to show he has no remorse.

Roof, jury deserve full picture, expert says

To Amador, who specializes in the psychology of killers, not presenting mental evidence is unfair to Roof and the jurors.

In statements to the jury that Roof plans to make, the convicted mass killer likely will try to justify why he shot African-Americans, Amador said.

“Roof almost certainly has some form of schizophrenia, a diagnosis that usually involves beliefs that are clearly the product of a broken brain – delusions, which are fixed, false beliefs” said Amador, who has kept up with Roof’s case by reading legal filings, Roof’s writings, watching his two-hour confession to FBI agents, interviewing people who’ve been at Roof’s trial and reading press accounts.

In psychiatric research, delusions are ranked on a scale of 1 to 7, and Roof’s delusions about racial conspiracies are at a level 7, Amador said. “He shouldn’t even be in trial right now as he has no understanding he has a mental illness.

“I’m not trying to excuse Roof’s behavior,” Amador said. “I’m trying to explain it so we stop these things from happening.”

Amador, a professor at State University of New York, has been either an expert witness or a consultant in approximately 70 death penalty cases, more than 40 of which involve severe psychotic disorders.

Amador’s experience includes mental health evaluations of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, as well as familiarity with some of the highest-profile killers in the nation. They include Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Jared Loughner, who shot and killed six and wounded former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, and Zacharias Mousssaoui, who is called the 20th 9/11 hijacker.

One common symptom of killers with the kind of schizophrenia Roof almost certainly has, Amador said, is a complete lack of awareness that something is wrong with them. That’s why Roof doesn’t want any mental health evidence presented, he said.

Traits of schizophrenic killers

Persons with schizophrenia who are unaware they are ill, and who have killed, often fire their attorneys to stop them from presenting mental health evidence, Amador said. By sidelining Bruck during the penalty phase, Roof has effectively done that, he said.

Other traits that Roof shares with schizophrenic killers Amador is familiar with include:

▪  Isolation from others. In press accounts after the killings, Roof’s stepmother described her son as a jobless recluse who stayed in his room and fixated on the internet. In his argument to the jury, Bruck also stressed that Roof’s only friend was his cat. “What does it mean that one’s social world is confined to an animal?” Bruck asked jurors.

▪  Roof’s sudden epiphany that African-Americans are whites’ mortal enemy is typical of delusional thinking, the psychiatrist said. That assertion by Roof was made to FBI agents. It contrasts with the usual, more gradual route by which terrorists become killers. That path usually takes months or years of brainwashing by others in a social setting. “His broken brain, in a matter of minutes, embraced this belief as a compass that gives his life meaning and direction,” Amador said.

▪  Demeanor during trial. Roof has not been disruptive, and that may have fooled Judge Gergel into thinking he is competent to stand trial, Amador said. But the form of schizophrenia that Roof has is characterized by an inability to express emotion normally, he said.

▪  Age. Roof is young, and the symptoms of schizophrenia typically develop during late teen years or early 20s. Numerous studies show that people become susceptible to schizophrenia at a young age, Amador said.

Is Roof creating his own appeal?

If Roof represents himself and does not permit the jury to hear mental health evidence, that will set up appeal issues, in the event that Roof is sentenced to death, a death penalty expert said.

“You can expect issues to be raised about whether a decision not to present mental health evidence was a competent decision,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that collects data on the death penalty.

“Someone can be sufficiently aware of the legal process and competent to stand trial, but at the same time, one can have a mental condition that makes them incompetent to make critical (penalty phase) decisions,” Dunham said. “There is a huge difference between a person whom the jury perceives as despicable and evil, and a person whom the jury believes is deeply mentally ill.”

Heidi Beirich, a Southern Poverty Law Center expert on violent white supremacists, has studied Roof, too.

“Roof is the biggest white supremacist mass murderer in recent years,” Beirich said. “The minute the attack happened, we started tracking everything about him.”

But Beirich was surprised to learn Roof was very different from typical, violent white supremacists.

Typically, white supremacists become violent at an age far older than Roof, Beirich said. And they have a history of interaction with like-minded associates.

Breirich cites James von Brunn, 88, a longtime neo-Nazi who killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in 2009, and Glenn Miller, 73, for decades a Ku Klux Klan leader, who shot up a Jewish retirement center near Kansas City, killing three bystanders.

“Most white supremacists killers spend a long time indoctrinating in the ideas. They stew in it,” Beirich said. “They are members of groups. They talk to people. They go to rallies. Roof doesn’t have any of this.”

Unlike those men, Roof went down internet “rabbit holes,” going from one hate group’s false information about blacks to another, absorbing false statistics about black-on-white crime and other race matters, she said.

“Roof clearly got obsessed with this stuff,” Beirich said. “He was quite fragile-minded, and he bought it.”

This story was originally published January 1, 2017 at 7:16 PM with the headline "Expert: Not fair to Roof, jury to withhold evidence about his ‘broken brain’."